Rate the driver's 2012 thus far.

but saying kimi's is constantly under-performing the car and RoGro is Constantly outpacing him is not logical either.

I'm not saying that Kimi is constantly underperforming the car but there are some states between underperforming and having the best pace and I'm convinced Kimi is somewhere there. Overall Kimi's performance throughout the season wasn't that bad, but Grosjean has proved many times that the car was capable of more than Kimi delivered in some races.As there are some people who would like to put Kimi to the same category with Vettel, Alonso and Hamilton, I have to disagree with them. Kimi's race pace is sometimes very good (I.E. Hungary), but sometimes Grosjean is proving that the car is capable of more. (Canada, Valencia and Singapore are the obvious one and you can argue about Great Britain and China also, and it's quite high percentage given how often Grosjean makes him unavailable to compare in the race). And we cannot just left his qualifying issues. There are some drivers on the grid who can perform on both Saturday and Sunday. Weak qualifying makes it harder to get everything from the car in the race and a great recovery from low grid position isn't worth of praise if you could finish even better with a proper performance in qualifying which were bad down to you. For the moment, Kimi looks like a good midfield driver, but I want to see improved qualifying and outpacing Grosjean more convincingly in more races before I put him into the top driver category with Vettel, Alonso and Hamilton.

I rate him clearly out of top3 2012 drivers at any day of the week. Wheter he deserves 4th, 7th or 10th it's hard to say. It's really hard to compare drivers this season as I can see some kind of inconsistency from the most of the drivers on the grid.

Anderis - we really don't know what Kimi or Romain aim for in the setup when they qualify (meaning it has to be good for the race too). And since Silverstone it seems Romain has been slower more often than not looking at the weekends. Not all the time, but most of the time. He was a long way behind in Germany, in Hungary he was behind until a late save in Q3 and Singapore was the same. At Spa he was behind. At Suzuka he was behind until Q3 and that was on a weekend where Kimi did a lot of testing parts. I know everyone won't agree, but saying Romain still is better in qualifying isn't quite true. It was a lot more like that in the beginning of the season but not now. Not as I see it, but OK - I am more interested in what Kimi is doing than watching the teammate battle for a tenth or two in every practice session. We will see what happens in the coming races. Will be interesting.

1. F Alonso - 90 pts. Starting with a sick Ferrari and leading the championship. The Ferrari got better and Fernando extended his lead. Very consistent and would be closing in on the championship if he hadn't been taken out twice in the first corner.

2. K Raikkonen - 85 pts. Maximising his car's potential. Most consistent driver of the season by scoring points in all but one race. Amazing that he's still a candidate for the championship after a two year absence

3. S Perez - 80 pts. Strong season with a couple of podiums. His preserving of the tyres helps him a lot, but nontheless still one of the surprises of the season and fully deserves his McLaren seat next season.

4. S Vettel - 75 pts. Poor season despite being second in the championship. When the car isn't working, Seb's not working. Not the top driver many believe him to be just yet. Still rate him fourth though.

5. L Hamilton - 70 pts. Strong first half of the season, but I feel he hasn't made use of his car's potential. He should have been leading the championship comfortably, yet he's trailing Alonso by a mile. Something went wrong for him

6. R Grosjean - 67 pts. Despite his many first lap errors, he's one of the eye openers of this season. Some very strong races, particularly in Bahrain, Canada and Hungary. Would have seriously given Kimi a run for his money, if he hadn't been involved in so many incidents.

7. P Maldonado - 62 pts. Same as Grosjean. Surprise win in Spain, flashes of speed during qualifying, but also involved in too many silly incidents. This Williams is not so good as many say it is, but Pastor seems to pull something out of the hat on many occasions.

8. M Webber - 58 pts. His season is not so bad as it seems. Dominant wins in Monaco and Silverstone and not far behind Vettel. Too bad his usual second half of the season slump kicked in.

9. N Rosberg - 52 pts. Very strong start to the season when his Mercedes was at its best. Dominant win in China, yet didn't seem to be able to develop that Mercedes. Car's pace gone, Nico's gone. Gone backwards in too many races.

10. N Hulkenberg - 48 pts. Good comeback which got of to a slow start. Seems more comfortable now and is starting to beat Di Resta more often.

11. J Button - 45 pts. Poor season which started off great in Melbourne. Not a world class driver because of his bad qualifying ability. Will not be McLaren's team leader next year, more of a DC role for him next to the coming man.

12. F Massa - 43 pts. Not too bad of season really. The Ferrari was poor and with this close field it was easy for him to fall back which made him look bad. Still needs to improve though, but he's only a couple of tenths shy of the best F1 driver from recent years.

13. K Kobayashi - 40 pts. In the shadow of his teammate Perez. He's great when he wants to be, but just as poor in other races. Very inconsistent and has cost Sauber too many points.

14. P di Resta - 38 pts. Overrated driver. Has his prime on tracks he likes, but overall just a midfield driver. Will be outshined by Hulkenberg in the last few races this season.

15. H Kovalainen - 36 pts. A bit overrated to be honest. Not leading the Caterham team like he should be. Good qualifier, but rather invisible during raceday.

16. V Petrov - 34 pts. Keeping up with Kovalainen easily. Nothing spectacular to show, but a decent drive so far this season.

17. D Ricciardo - 30 pts. A bit invisible to be honest. Good race in Melbourne, good qualifying in Bahrain, that's it really. Though, it's impossible to shine in that Toro Rosso this season.

18. M Schumacher - 29 pts. Very poor season compared to his material. Has had a lot of bad luck true, but a lot of silly collisions as well. Highlights being his collisions with Senna in Spain and Vergne in Singapore. Good qualifying lap in Monaco though.

20. J Vergne - 25 pts. A bit of let down in my opinion. Had high hopes because of his achievements in junior classes. Dubbed the next Vettel, but not living up to it yet. Seems to be a good wet racer though, which is always nice.

21. C Pic - 22 pts. Keeping up with Glock with ease, but then again, so did Di Grassi and D'Ambrosio. Though Pic is the most invisible driver on this year's grid.

22. P de la Rosa - 20 pts. Not doing to bad vor a veteran in that garbage can of a car. Keeping Karthikeyan behind him without any problems, which is what he needs to do.

23. T Glock - 19 pts. Very poor, unmotivated like in 2010 and 2011. Needs to get away from that team, because he can drive very well. I'm hoping Sauber picks him up.

24. N Karthikeyan - 15 pts. Not F1 material really. Consistently more than half a second slower than his teammate. He's good in lower classes like A1GP and Superleague Formula, but not for F1

No, the real question is why can't some people accept that the fact that someone does not rate their favourite driver high enough does not mean they're trolling.

You're trolling buddy, live with it. If you don't like to read you're trolling, don't troll.

Rating Petrov's season above Räikkönen's is straight up trolling, at least in this universe. You might come from a parallel one where the season was different, and Petrov is not sucking and Räikkönen is doing a Grosjean season instead of challenging for wdc, if that's the case, excuse me sir.

You're trolling buddy, live with it. If you don't like to read you're trolling, don't troll.

Rating Petrov's season above Räikkönen's is straight up trolling, at least in this universe. You might come from a parallel one where the season was different, and Petrov is not sucking and Räikkönen is doing a Grosjean season instead of challenging for wdc, if that's the case, excuse me sir.

No, I'm not trolling. I've given my reasons. I didn't rate Raikkonen that lowly; I gave him 70%, which I think is perfectly reasonable. Petrov is I feel doing a great and oft-overlooked job for Caterham, and may have scraped a point in Valencia if Ricciardo hadn't hit him, which would have been one of the achievements of the season.

Baring in mind Hamilton has made no mistakes all season, has a stronger team mate and a worse team (operations) than Vettel and Alonso, he is miles ahead of them both. Making it into Q3 all season is a brilliant achievement.

You probably put Hamilton on top, because you just like him more than Alonso and Vettel. I'm tempted to do the same and rate them Vet, Alo, Ham in that order. But honestly, all three are driving superbly when looking at the season as a whole and it's very hard to say whether one was really better than the other.

I don't think so up until Suzuka I had Alonso rated as overall the best performer.

I think there's very little to choose between Alonso and Hamilton bar, that incident, but i did feel up until that point that Alonso had done a better job in maximising the equipment that he had, while Lewis had had terrible luck.

As for Vettel as I said he's made more mistakes than either of the other two, and racked up penalties that have detrimentally affected his finishing performance, in contrast to Hamilton or Alonso who haven't. Furthermore as I said I don't think he's been quite as consistent as either Hamilton or Alonso in maximising the car, particularly when it was at it's worse during the early stages of the season when Webber genuinely looked like beating him on pace, I think he's done a great job, but I don't think he's quite matched either of them.

I rate him clearly out of top3 2012 drivers at any day of the week. Wheter he deserves 4th, 7th or 10th it's hard to say. It's really hard to compare drivers this season as I can see some kind of inconsistency from the most of the drivers on the grid.

No, the real question is why can't some people accept that the fact that someone does not rate their favourite driver high enough does not mean they're trolling.

I respect both your views on how you rate Kimi. I am however curious to know whether you have considered some of the following points when rating his performances?

1. That Kimi is new to the team, compared to Alonso, Vettel and Lewis who have been in their teams for multiple years.2. Kimi and Romain drive a car not designed to either of their preferences, unlike the equipment of Alonso, Vettel and Lewis.3. Team does not have baseline data or past setup information for either of their drivers when they start the weekend, unlike the above three.4. Kimi is back after a two year break.

In my opinion Kimi's qualifying has certainly had issues, which I believe are largely to do with tire warm-up issues. However in the races, his performances have been excellent in my view, hence why he is in the top 3 of the championship.

For some who suspect that Lotus was the fastest car, or one of the fastest cars in the earlier races, personally I don't agree. Certainly it had excellent race pace for some races in the early season, but I think the fact that the car has never featured in the top of the standings in any of the 45 Free Practice session over the year up to now (except in Monaco when the session was curtailed due to rain) points to me that it certainly wasn't the best overall package - i.e. one lap pace and race pace. If you have a look, you will see that Maclaren, RBR and even Ferrari have sessions where they ended on the top, compared to none for Lotus.

No, I'm not trolling. I've given my reasons. I didn't rate Raikkonen that lowly; I gave him 70%, which I think is perfectly reasonable. Petrov is I feel doing a great and oft-overlooked job for Caterham, and may have scraped a point in Valencia if Ricciardo hadn't hit him, which would have been one of the achievements of the season.

Greetings from the Earth. If you see some white stuff in the sky flying soon, it's a crazy skydiver from our universe. Please follow his indications and send it back here.

In our world Petrov is nowhere, and Räikkönen's doing a great job. Nice to hear from there.

Ps. Send me spanish league results from round 20. I might test luck betting some money just in case soccer players are doing same as here.

I think the outright top 3 drivers of this season are Alonso, Vettel and Hamilton.

The one other driver who could be rated alongside these three is Kimi but I find it hard to rate his season considering the circumstances of his return to a new team. However, I think that by this time next year he will probably be considered as one of the best drivers in F1 alongside FA, LH and SV (if he isn't already).

Alonso have maximized his results even when the car was mediocre, very consistent, plans for the long term
Vettel is mighty quick, very strong mentally, opportunist racer
Hamilton: strong pace, best qualifier, keeps his spirit even after the team's massive cockups
Raikkonen: cleanest, most consistent driver, superb speed after a 2 year hiatus

Greetings from the Earth. If you see some white stuff in the sky flying soon, it's a crazy skydiver from our universe. Please follow his indications and send it back here.

In our world Petrov is nowhere, and Räikkönen's doing a great job. Nice to hear from there.

Ps. Send me spanish league results from round 20. I might test luck betting some money just in case soccer players are doing same as here.

Sarcasm is the lowest form of humour.

If you really want to bet on the Spanish league results, predict wins for Barcelona, Real Madrid and probably Atletico, with Messi, Ronaldo and Falcao all scoring. However, your guess on that is as good as mine because actually, I am from the same world and time period as you.

I respect both your views on how you rate Kimi. I am however curious to know whether you have considered some of the following points when rating his performances?

1. That Kimi is new to the team, compared to Alonso, Vettel and Lewis who have been in their teams for multiple years.2. Kimi and Romain drive a car not designed to either of their preferences, unlike the equipment of Alonso, Vettel and Lewis.3. Team does not have baseline data or past setup information for either of their drivers when they start the weekend, unlike the above three.4. Kimi is back after a two year break.

In my opinion Kimi's qualifying has certainly had issues, which I believe are largely to do with tire warm-up issues. However in the races, his performances have been excellent in my view, hence why he is in the top 3 of the championship.

For some who suspect that Lotus was the fastest car, or one of the fastest cars in the earlier races, personally I don't agree. Certainly it had excellent race pace for some races in the early season, but I think the fact that the car has never featured in the top of the standings in any of the 45 Free Practice session over the year up to now (except in Monaco when the session was curtailed due to rain) points to me that it certainly wasn't the best overall package - i.e. one lap pace and race pace. If you have a look, you will see that Maclaren, RBR and even Ferrari have sessions where they ended on the top, compared to none for Lotus.

Well, in this kind of threads, I rate drivers by how much have they delivered from the car. I could consider these points, but then I would need also to consider how inexperienced drivers would do if they were more experienced etc. That would make this rating pretty useless. I've never written that Kimi's overall performance was bad or that he was underperforming. But for me, he didn't deliver that much from the car as at least 3 other drivers from the current grid and it's not the topic in which I feel that I should include all reasons that made it harder to deliver. It's a topic about rating driver's performances in 2012, not rating them how good drivers are they at all.

And I don't think Free Practises are good benchmark how good the car is. I'm not saying Lotus was the best overall package, but I'm pretty sure it was one of the very best and if Raikkonen could qualify as good as Grosjean, he could've won one or two races this season. And I believe Vettel, Alonso or Hamilton would have won in this car at least once too.

Baring in mind Hamilton has made no mistakes all season, has a stronger team mate and a worse team (operations) than Vettel and Alonso, he is miles ahead of them both. Making it into Q3 all season is a brilliant achievement.

Not quite sure why people are rating Kimi up there with those three this season? Presumably some sort of latent worshipping. He's had a successful, if unspectacular, re-entry into the sport in my view. Nothing more

I'm not saying that Kimi is constantly underperforming the car but there are some states between underperforming and having the best pace and I'm convinced Kimi is somewhere there. Overall Kimi's performance throughout the season wasn't that bad, but Grosjean has proved many times that the car was capable of more than Kimi delivered in some races.As there are some people who would like to put Kimi to the same category with Vettel, Alonso and Hamilton, I have to disagree with them. Kimi's race pace is sometimes very good (I.E. Hungary), but sometimes Grosjean is proving that the car is capable of more. (Canada, Valencia and Singapore are the obvious one and you can argue about Great Britain and China also, and it's quite high percentage given how often Grosjean makes him unavailable to compare in the race). And we cannot just left his qualifying issues. There are some drivers on the grid who can perform on both Saturday and Sunday. Weak qualifying makes it harder to get everything from the car in the race and a great recovery from low grid position isn't worth of praise if you could finish even better with a proper performance in qualifying which were bad down to you. For the moment, Kimi looks like a good midfield driver, but I want to see improved qualifying and outpacing Grosjean more convincingly in more races before I put him into the top driver category with Vettel, Alonso and Hamilton.

I rate him clearly out of top3 2012 drivers at any day of the week. Wheter he deserves 4th, 7th or 10th it's hard to say. It's really hard to compare drivers this season as I can see some kind of inconsistency from the most of the drivers on the grid.

pls open live timing when watching race!! kimi's race pace has always been better than Romain by large margin! He clearly outpace romain in singapore (the gap was due to schumacher holding kimi up.)

In canada kimi faced differential failures

in valencia, it was kimi tat back off during the start when romain tried to squeeze him wide that they avoid accidents (after that kimi was stuck behind traffic)

the fact is mclaren, rbr and even ferrari are better car than Lotus!! And kimi was up there on 3rd in a fairy uncompetitive car!! Nuff said

Not quite sure why people are rating Kimi up there with those three this season? Presumably some sort of latent worshipping. He's had a successful, if unspectacular, re-entry into the sport in my view. Nothing more

his drive in hungary by setting fastest lap time on worn out used soft tyre proved that his skill was among the best! (unspectacular????)

what had hamilton showed in the best car???

nt sure why ppl claim he was the fastest when he got fastest car on his hand !!

Well, in this kind of threads, I rate drivers by how much have they delivered from the car. I could consider these points, but then I would need also to consider how inexperienced drivers would do if they were more experienced etc. That would make this rating pretty useless. I've never written that Kimi's overall performance was bad or that he was underperforming. But for me, he didn't deliver that much from the car as at least 3 other drivers from the current grid and it's not the topic in which I feel that I should include all reasons that made it harder to deliver. It's a topic about rating driver's performances in 2012, not rating them how good drivers are they at all.

And I don't think Free Practises are good benchmark how good the car is. I'm not saying Lotus was the best overall package, but I'm pretty sure it was one of the very best and if Raikkonen could qualify as good as Grosjean, he could've won one or two races this season. And I believe Vettel, Alonso or Hamilton would have won in this car at least once too.

before you made superficial judgement, why dont you hv a look on team strategies ??

in bahrain, they should pit kimi earlier to undercut vettel

in spain, they pit kimi on soft tyre for longer run (hard was the fastest tyre)

in monaco, delivered a bad steering setup for kimi

shanghai (make kimi run half the race distance on used medium tyre (when they had fresh medium on their disposal)

in canada, (pit kimi behind traffic)

hockenheim (again, pit kimi on slow tyre and make him run longer, kimi ended up 3rd starting from 10th)

silverstone ( team again showed that they are clueless about undercut)

suzuka (4 sec pit stop, lose 5th position to lewis)

And since silverstone, kimi often faced kers failure issues during qualifying and races!!

your judgement are single sided, i hardly doubt qualifying hampered kimi much on sunday as much as team strategies. and again, pls open live timing during races before making stereotype judgement.

Kimi has been 100% or more during races for example spa and monza!! The car clearly lack pace but kimi still ended up 3rd and 5th!!!

Edit

Romain received new updates on valencia to silverstone while kimi receive it later than him!!

It's nice to see Webber rated so high by some.. imagine where he'd be if he hadn't been so SHITHOUSE since the British GP.. and then the one race he looks to be able to podium again.. Grosjean takes him out.. lol.

I find rating the drivers really hard. It's been so close this season. It used to be 2 Ferrari's.. 2 McLaren's.. 2 BMW's.. etc. This season it's really mixed up and competitive. I've been too busy enjoying the season to worry about who is driving best or arguing about drivers on forums.

It's been a good season.

Only thing I am sure about is that Alonso is easily best driver this season and deserves the title.. if Vettel does steal it from him.. Vettel deserves it too, he's been very good also. The rest have been inconsistant.

someone comes up with an opinion and another person disagrees completely and both parties go on to debate about something that they already have made up their mind about...
no party is gonna change their position, valid arguments or not.
It's like reasoning with religious people... reason and evidence doesnt work with those people.
this is of course aimed particularly at the raikkonen discussions where one person gives him a 100 while the other rates him on the same level as maldonado...

Im not gonna give a real scale, seems to be pointless, especially the 1-100 one.(has anyone ever gona below 50 for the worst driver?! why even have 1-100 when no one used the bottom half)
This is also based somewhat on the real standings.
1.Alonso would have finished every race in the points if it wasnt for his two DNF's, one was his arguably his own fault, but still, that was a unfortunate accident, nothing compared to the grosjean/maldonado blunders this season...
also, not the car to have overall, arguably best in the rain, but overall not the best.
2/3.Vettel, the red bull wasnt as fast as the mclaren over the whole season imho, maybe that changes now, but anyway, it's a very very close call, and for all I know it could be hamilton up here in second place, both drivers lost a easy victory because of car failure, hamilton lost additional points because of other team blunders and misfortune.
4.Raikkonen, made no race ending error, stayed out of trouble and collected points in every race other than china.Kinda like alonsos performance last year, although he was challenged more often by his teammate.
he is in front of button and webber in both the real standings and my "rating". they (button/webber) both won 2 races compared to their teammates 3, suggestion they were not living up to the cars potential.(if we include valencia and singapore, then both hamilton and vettel lost an additional victory through no fault of their own, dont remember that happening to either webber or button)

and that's where I stop, I obviously tried to explain why I rated them as I rated them instead of just putting a number behind them that doesnt mean anything
and I dont wanna do that for the whole grid.

someone comes up with an opinion and another person disagrees completely and both parties go on to debate about something that they already have made up their mind about...no party is gonna change their position, valid arguments or not.It's like reasoning with religious people... reason and evidence doesnt work with those people.this is of course aimed particularly at the raikkonen discussions where one person gives him a 100 while the other rates him on the same level as maldonado...

Im not gonna give a real scale, seems to be pointless, especially the 1-100 one.(has anyone ever gona below 50 for the worst driver?! why even have 1-100 when no one used the bottom half)This is also based somewhat on the real standings.1.Alonso would have finished every race in the points if it wasnt for his two DNF's, one was his arguably his own fault, but still, that was a unfortunate accident, nothing compared to the grosjean/maldonado blunders this season... also, not the car to have overall, arguably best in the rain, but overall not the best.2/3.Vettel, the red bull wasnt as fast as the mclaren over the whole season imho, maybe that changes now, but anyway, it's a very very close call, and for all I know it could be hamilton up here in second place, both drivers lost a easy victory because of car failure, hamilton lost additional points because of other team blunders and misfortune.4.Raikkonen, made no race ending error, stayed out of trouble and collected points in every race other than china.Kinda like alonsos performance last year, although he was challenged more often by his teammate.he is in front of button and webber in both the real standings and my "rating". they (button/webber) both won 2 races compared to their teammates 3, suggestion they were not living up to the cars potential.(if we include valencia and singapore, then both hamilton and vettel lost an additional victory through no fault of their own, dont remember that happening to either webber or button)

and that's where I stop, I obviously tried to explain why I rated them as I rated them instead of just putting a number behind them that doesnt mean anything and I dont wanna do that for the whole grid.

i can only think of bahrain and hungary in which kimi push like crazy but let down by team conservative strategy (bahrain) and kers failure (hungary)

Well he did not win but waste? Well Considering he puts Kovalainen well below Petrov makes it seem like ethnicity issue more than anything else.

If I am not entirely mistaken, like Alonso, Perez (at 80) also kind of sort completely wasted a very good race car last Sunday but I guess it's just me thinking that parking a perfectly healthy car on sand in the race is less of a mistake than spinning on a qualifying lap let alone failing to overtake for lead on a track where overtaking is next to impossible.

All this crap about under performing the car is circular, it inevitably hinges on priors:

Räikkönen is crap & he gets decent results ==> The car must be the best or very close ==> Räikkönen cannot win & Räikkönen has the best car ==> Räikkönen is crap....

reduced to bare essentials this becomes: Räikkönen is crap ===> Räikkönen is crap.

pls open live timing when watching race!! kimi's race pace has always been better than Romain by large margin! He clearly outpace romain in singapore (the gap was due to schumacher holding kimi up.)

This is ridiculous. Yoru're accusing that I don't know lap times from races, while I discuss with people here because I've checked lap times charts from races before I got involved to the discussion. Kimi's race pace was significantly better in 3 or 4 races this season, this is what can I see.For example this is lap times chart for Singapore with Raikkonen and Grosjean's times. How anybody can insist that Raikkonen was significantly faster is beyond me.

If you had read my previous posts properly, you would realise that I've also posted fact about race in Great Britain. Grosjean was 28 seconds behind Raikkonen on lap 3 due to 1st lap incident, but finished only 7 seconds behind him despite highly compromised strategy. And yet another time Kimi's fans insist Kimi was significantly faster, but without stating any facts, lap times, etc.

the fact is mclaren, rbr and even ferrari are better car than Lotus!! And kimi was up there on 3rd in a fairy uncompetitive car!! Nuff said

Kimi is up there on 3rd because other were underperforming. But it was not always down to driver, as in Hamilton's case, he lost major amount of points due to team mistakes and unreliability of the car, while Kimi had lost very little points due to this comparedd to others.This car seems to be a bit uncompetitive in last few races, but in first half of the season this car was certainly no slower than Ferrari.

before you made superficial judgement, why dont you hv a look on team strategies ??

Why are you so sure that I don't look at it? In fact, all drivers can complain that their teams could behave better in many races. I base my judgement mostly on lap times from qualis and races and comparison to Grosjean. I don't judge that Kimi finished 6th while I think the car should've finished 4th, it's not the case. I look on lap times charts and I see Kimi's pace not always had been as superior as many Kimi's fans insist.

This is ridiculous. Yoru're accusing that I don't know lap times from races, while I discuss with people here because I've checked lap times charts from races before I got involved to the discussion. Kimi's race pace was significantly better in 3 or 4 races this season, this is what can I see.For example this is lap times chart for Singapore with Raikkonen and Grosjean's times. How anybody can insist that Raikkonen was significantly faster is beyond me.

If you had read my previous posts properly, you would realise that I've also posted fact about race in Great Britain. Grosjean was 28 seconds behind Raikkonen on lap 3 due to 1st lap incident, but finished only 7 seconds behind him despite highly compromised strategy. And yet another time Kimi's fans insist Kimi was significantly faster, but without stating any facts, lap times, etc.

Kimi is up there on 3rd because other were underperforming. But it was not always down to driver, as in Hamilton's case, he lost major amount of points due to team mistakes and unreliability of the car, while Kimi had lost very little points due to this comparedd to others.This car seems to be a bit uncompetitive in last few races, but in first half of the season this car was certainly no slower than Ferrari.

Why are you so sure that I don't look at it? In fact, all drivers can complain that their teams could behave better in many races. I base my judgement mostly on lap times from qualis and races and comparison to Grosjean. I don't judge that Kimi finished 6th while I think the car should've finished 4th, it's not the case. I look on lap times charts and I see Kimi's pace not always had been as superior as many Kimi's fans insist.

thats why, you are blind!!

In Silverstone do you noticed the fastest tyre was hard????Romain didn;t compromised by pitting earlier, instead he benefitted by running more laps on fastest tyre and clean air. Kimi was on worn out slower tyre and stuck on traffic. The team reluctantly pit him earlier unlike what rbr did for Vettel which hurt kimi by running too long on the slow tyre. They nvr thought of undercut the schumacher train. Which is why the gap remain 7 when kimi finally got clean air and pitted with hard compound.

And nope, i disagree with your false claim on kimi clinging 3rd because others underperforming. And your claim on kimi losing little point is laugable!! 18 point in shanghai, 7 points in bahrain, 3 points in spain, 15 points in canada (differntial failure and brundle strategies), 10 points in monaco (provide kimi undrivable power steering) ...i havent count the points loss due to KERS issues. Allan Mcnish said the other teams question their strategies as it clearly hurt kimi on every race so far.

No way in hell kimi could finished 4th on Suzuka. You claim you read the live timing, i dont think lotus has the pace of mclaren - button. Kimi could hv finished 5th if the team didnt perform a 4 sec pit stop.

Kimi's race pace was significantly better in 3 or 4 races this season, this is what can I see.

How many times have both Lotuses been able to run on more or less clear track without their respective pace being significantly affected if not determined by track position? Its' more than four but not by much. Of those Bahrain, Räikkönen quicker; Barcelona Räikkönen quicker; Hungary, Räikkönen quicker, ... Silverstone and Singapore, neither fit the bill and Valencia not really either, Canada well probably.

Concerning my statement on grammar in this forum: some people's "of" instead of "have", "this" instead of "it is" and of course the wrong use of apostrophes by native speakers are a pity.

This is an international forum, with many posters struggling to put it into correct English terms. I have seen some improve their command of the English language dramatically simply by being on the forum. It is sad that because of native speakers being sloppy in their posts a wrong example is set and the chance for others to learn English properly is taken away.